Archive for the 'Compound Names' Category

One of the most popular blogs tracked by Technorati (currently #14) is PostSecret. It’s a “community art project” where people anonymously submit their secrets on postcards, and it’s quite compelling, in an emotionally voyeuristic kind of way. You find all the juicy stuff you’d expect to find: confessions and accusations of infidelity, descriptions of other [...]

A couple months back The Name Inspector had lunch with Brian Dorsey. Brian talked about a kooky idea he had for a website: people would specify a date and a geographical area and get matched up with random strangers via email to meet for lunch. Brian really likes to go out for lunch. He works [...]

Paul Montgomery writes about his company’s name: Tinfinger is intended to be to the Who’s Who what Wikipedia was to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Its main function is a search engine of biographical information on famous and semi-famous public figures. It also has news aggregation features similar to Techmeme, based around people’s names instead of hyperlink [...]

Some of the Name Inspector’s readers have commented that the posts so far have all been pretty positive. While he has made a conscious decision to play nice until people get to know him, the Name Inspector is not all bunnies and butterflies. Here’s a story about a name that doesn’t work, bravely submitted by [...]

PageFlakes shows how a quirky but vivid metaphor can make for a good name. In this case the name is for a customizable Ajax personal home page similar to Netvibes. The quirky, one is almost tempted to say flaky, thing about this name is of course the word flakes. Flakes are insubstantial little things and [...]

TechCrunch is about as hardnosed as a name can be, both in sound and in meaning. Has this helped to establish Michael Arrington as a rainmaker of Web 2.0? Who can say? What makes this name so badass? First, there’s the no-nonsense word tech, which tells you in no uncertain terms what Mr. Arrington will [...]

When YouTube was acquired by Google, there were jokes about how it might be renamed (GooTube? GoogTube?). There were some serious suggestions, too. One branding expert urged Google to change the name to GoogleTube. In the Name Inspector’s not-so-humble opinion, Google was smart to let things stand. YouTube is a great name. A compound made [...]